BP's Dudley Sees $55-70 Oil In Coming Years

ISTANBUL, , (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 11th Oct, 2016 ) ; Oil should hover at around $55-70 a barrel for the rest of the decade as the energy industry undergoes "profound changes" after crude prices came under heavy pressure in recent years, BP chief executive Bob Dudley said on Tuesday.

Dudley was speaking at the World Energy Congress in Istanbul, where a pledge on Monday by Russian President Vladimir Putin to work with OPEC in imposing output curbs had pushed oil prices up to their highest level for a year.

US benchmark West Texas Intermediate for November delivery jumped $1.54 to $51.35 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the highest closing price since July 2015. Dudley predicted that the "price of oil will cycle between $55-70 (a barrel) for the rest of the decade unless there is a price squeeze.

" He said stable and reasonable prices were in everyone's interests.

"It's not good for the world to have prices at $25 (a barrel), not good to have (them) at $100," he said. He said around one trillion Dollars of energy projects have been cancelled or deferred around the world due to the recent low oil prices.

"We are going through a time where supply has outstripped demand," Dudley said, with new sources of supply coming at a time when the previously extraordinary demand growth had slowed. "These are profound changes that mean we need to be competitive in a way that's different from the past."